


And So It Goes

by Wheely_Jessi



Series: Song Shots [6]
Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: Anniversaries, Character Development, Comfort, Delia being amazing, Emotions, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Music, Nurses & Nursing, One Shot, Patsy being kind to herself, Post-Canon, Remembrance, Songfic, Sort of a character study, Support, Vague context of HIV/AIDS, self-care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:35:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24168202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wheely_Jessi/pseuds/Wheely_Jessi
Summary: On a difficult day in December 1990, whilst working on the Broderip Ward, Patsy takes advantage of a brief break to listen to what has quickly become one of her most special songs. Then Delia comes to check on her, and they both honour the memory of her sister.Inspired by Billy Joel's "And So It Goes".
Relationships: Delia Busby & Patsy Mount, Delia Busby/Patsy Mount
Series: Song Shots [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1037367
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	And So It Goes

**Author's Note:**

> The song is here, with lyrics (although the lyrics are in the fic too): https://youtu.be/wcUCYtyaLrY
> 
> This loosely follows on from my recent oneshot _True Colours_ , but only really in that it's also set on the Broderip Ward at Middlesex Hospital, so you don't need to read both. It's posted in recognition of my friend Shane's third anniversary today. I didn't manage to pick from of the many songs that were important to us when we were at school, so instead paid more general homage to our shared love of music by being nostalgic about technology, as will become clear. Then I chose to write to one of my go-to grief tracks, because it struck me how much the song is really about processing all the experiences we encounter as people and the support we need to do so. I'm aware Joel purportedly wrote it in response to the end of a difficult relationship, but Patsy and Delia wouldn't have known that at the time this is set, and a group of us from uni also sang it as choral piece at a friend's wedding. So although I use it to process grief, hopefully the more positive connotations of the song are evident. I wanted this to be an ultimately hopeful piece that shows the power of support, because the school I attended with Shane gave us a sense of what community solidarity meant as disabled teenagers.

Popping the lid of her Discman open, Patsy grins, glad of her recent past-self’s knowledge of the song she would need to hear today. Because she needs to _cry_ , but feeling safe enough to do so is still tricky. (And likely will be for the rest of her life, she thinks ruefully, as she shuts the lid again, and sits up slightly to slip the player back into her pocket and the headphones on, then lies down on the mat again to make the most of the very brief break after her shiatsu session.) It’s tricky even now, here, working on a ward like the Broderip where grief is so much a part of their shared professional experience that it apparently requires complimentary shiatsu sessions. The thing is, the personal and the professional are such vastly different realms, however intertwined they might become. Whether by accident or design. (For her, it’s been a bit of both.) And everyone else has enough of their own emotions to deal with. They don’t need the addition of hers. Especially not when today’s sadness is from circumstances entirely beyond their control. From before the majority of them were even born. So yes, she needs the solace of this song, and is grateful to her past-self for picking it out. And, thanks to the portability of technology nowadays, she can listen to it on repeat without much faff…once she’s ready to start it. Perfect. Her past-self came to at least one good decision. No, she clarifies, tutting inwardly. _Two_ good decisions. Dating Delia being the first. Dating Delia and then staying by her side for the three-and-a-bit decades since they met.

A smile plays about her lips, realising that perhaps it’s not _her_ past-self she should be thanking, but Delia’s. For both the persistence of their relationship over so many years and the more immediate presence of this particular compact disc in her player this morning. Because Delia was the one who bought it; who _brought_ the album _home_ for them to share.

Her smile grows as she remembers the day she first heard it. The day they’d first listened to it together. This time last year. And how they’d got still when this song began. She smiles wider and wider even though, the moment the piano played its opening chords, she’d had a lump in her throat. And despite the fact that, when the lyrics joined the melody, she was gone. As Delia probably knew she’d be. She ought to have been used to it herself by then; they’d spent enough years exchanging meaningful music, after all. But every so often there was a tune which hit even closer to home than the others. And this was one such song.

That’s why she needs it today, though, she thinks, at last reaching to press play. Because the reason the piano – and its later underlying synthesiser part – had made her cry was that she understood Delia was suggesting its harmony symbolised the synthesis of their connection. It wasn’t always exact, by any means, but it was there. And the words of the first verse only furthered her fiancée’s message. 

‘ _In every heart there is a room  
A sanctuary safe and strong  
To heal the wounds from lovers past  
Until a new one comes along_’

Because her beloved brunette had helped her to make a room in her heart for the feelings she needed to feel. Not, perhaps, from _lovers_ past, but _others_ who had _passed_ , to use a phrase which fit with Billy Joel’s if not with her own preferences for describing death. Nor, indeed, to heal her wounds entirely – but to give them space to be sore when necessary. And, during the days, weeks, months, years, decades it’d taken for construction of that room to be completed and become sufficiently safe and strong, her Welsh Wonder had proven _herself_ a sanctuary. A willing one, too.

_‘I spoke to you in cautious tones  
You answered me with no pretense  
And still I feel I said too much  
My silence is my self defense’_

Despite the difficulty she’d had being persuaded, Patsy observes with a small, wry, grin (as the song slips smoothly into its second verse and she at last feels safe enough to let tears flow freely down her cheeks whilst listening to these particularly poignant lyrics). And notwithstanding the hours upon hours Delia had been subjected to her cautious tones – which had _absolutely_ felt like saying too much, particularly at the beginning. How much it must’ve hurt her to experience the same repeated refrain of an agitated (if not exactly angry) silence followed by an awkward but always profuse apology. Along with the apologies that tumbled out when her adult self knew they weren’t strictly necessary but her _child_ selves wouldn’t be convinced. _Roundly refused_ to be convinced. But, aside from the occasional (justified) outburst, Delia hadn’t minded. She’d even _understood_ why her walls were there; why they sprung up at what sometimes seemed like the oddest times imaginable. Even after the accident, when her wariness had made those walls temper her delight at their reunion. Turning cautious tones into clumsy, but honest, statements like “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to that”, and allowing her only to follow her sweetheart’s (utterly sincere and unpretentious) speech with “Can’t I just say come back?”

(Because Delia’s smile on hearing that showed she’d heard _her_ sincerity too.)

_‘And every time I’ve held a rose  
It seems I only felt the thorns  
And so it goes, and so it goes  
And so will you soon I suppose’_

Then the chorus conjures up how that wariness had continued to surface once her little love had finally moved into the convent – once they’d been “under the same roof at last” – and the Su family’s situation had brought up so much early agony. But also how there’d been nothing but dependable support. Regardless of how despicably she’d behaved. Because Delia acknowledged, even more readily than she could herself, that she’d been pricked by the thorns of her childhood trauma. And how (when they’d established that Patsy hadn’t wanted her to go) she’d promised she’d stay. Matching the intensity of her stare to the certainty of her words. Couching the promise in the reminder that, though death and its resultant grief were indeed inevitable, they weren’t always quite as imminent as Patsy’s (understandably) anxious psyche had thus far led her to believe. And providing emphatic evidence for that by being present at her side, and starting to chip away (again) at her resignation about being abandoned.

There, she decides, is the crux of this song’s significance. For her and for them. True, there have been many more misunderstandings since. Not least when a combination of internal (metaphorical) and external (literal) storms stopped her writing whilst she was away overseas. Yet she knows now that that moment, sitting on Delia’s bed, in Delia’s room, hearing Delia say that short and sure sentence – “But you didn’t” – was when everything shifted. When she’d let herself at least start to feel safe again.

Possibly for the first time since they were students.

Because she’d not only been able to talk properly, and make her needs known, but she’d been answered. Answered in a way that reassured her she’d been heard and listened to. In the way that Delia always did so well. She’d just forgotten to trust that it’d happen. Or, actually, she hadn’t yet comprehended that it still _could_ in their new context at Nonnatus.

_‘But if my silence made you leave  
Then that would be my worst mistake  
So I will share this room with you  
And you can have this heart to break’_

Once she understood, though, she’d coaxed herself towards being braver (like third verse coaxed _itself_ towards acknowledging the importance of open communication). She’d even, eventually, learnt to value the existence of a community who could support them by validating the reality of their relationship in the midst of a world where that was otherwise impossible.

Oh, how much she owes the other women at the Gates, she thinks, a giggle now forcing its way through her sobs. Not just for the good bits, either. Solidarity was found in sharing struggles too. And they had “got” the grief, as well. The fact that their experiences hadn’t all been exactly identical didn’t matter. It actually helped to know she was a mere one of many. Sometimes musing on the sense of her individual insignificance could be the most comforting idea of all. Alongside the almost paradoxical power a single person might find through forging a link with a group. That’d been part of her reasoning behind broaching the possibility of coming to work on the Broderip. She wanted to support others as she’d been supported herself. A strategy Delia had endorsed – on the proviso, of course, that it wasn’t used as an excuse to bottle everything up. (Because, as she’d _also_ learnt, at last, at the Gates, the two things weren’t mutually exclusive. Indeed, the opposite was true: she’d be _completely incapable_ of helping others if she didn’t help _herself_.)

_‘And this is why my eyes are closed  
It’s just as well for all I’ve seen  
And so it goes, and so it goes  
And you’re the only one who knows’_

This is a fact of which her colleagues on the ward are only too aware, as well. It’s the rationale behind the shiatsu sessions and the relaxation time that goes beyond ordinary breaks in both length and form. It balances out the extra effort they put in with their patients. And, today, she lets herself feel glad of it without any guilt. At least for the three-and-a-half minutes it’ll take the track to play a single time. Then she’ll reassess before repeating, she decides, revising her earlier eagerness to hear it over and over and over. It’s already doing its work well, in allowing her an outlet for her anguish. A space to herself, _in_ herself, to bear witness to all she’s seen (to paraphrase the second chorus). But she’s conscious that both her hair and the mat are getting more than a little damp. And, whilst her _makeup_ might be salvageable, she’s doubtful her hair will cope. Not to mention Delia, to whom she’d have to leave the sorting out. Because they’ve stuck with long styles to suit each other’s preferences more than their own, after all. But that doesn’t seem fair, especially on a day when she’s done so much already – starting by putting the right CD in her Discman. So, in the spirit of the song, she shuts her eyes; she’s exhausted from crying anyway and it’s time for the tears to stop. Then she sits up again, fumbling in her pocket not for the player but a tissue, and giggling as the fourth verse and final chorus fragment emphasises exactly the sentiment of reciprocity that’s inspiring her actions now. 

_‘So I would choose to be with you  
That’s if the choice were mine to make  
But you can make decisions too  
And you can have this heart to break  
  
And so it goes, and so it goes  
And you’re the only one who knows_’

Because she would – _did_ – choose to be with Delia. Just as Delia chose to be with her. And that was (and has been, and still is) an act which required them each to assert their own agency. As they do every day, in continuing to be the only one that the other ever wants to know about the full expanse of the emotional “rooms” in their hearts.

After Billy Joel sings his final word, she presses pause with one hand, using the other to take off her headphones. They’re not especially effective, but they do _muffle_ outside noise a fair bit, which is a problem if she needs to know when to vacate the room. And it turns out she picked the right moment to remove them, because there’s a knock at the door – although the warm Welsh tones accompanying it tell her it’s not just some random colleague. ‘Are you decent, Patsy?’

‘Yes, Delia, I am,’ she calls back softly. ‘Come in.’

At that invitation, her smaller sweetheart tiptoes inside and, apparently dropping the formality denoted by their full names, asks another, more intimate question. ‘Are you all right?’

She nods, grinning awkwardly and dabbing at her eyes with the tissue again, then drawling, ‘The person who decided this particular type of mascara could be marketed as waterproof was, as you would say, a fibber.’

Her favourite face shifts from concern to delight at this evidence of humour. ‘Good thing I brought your makeup bag, then,’ the brunette quips with a wink, easing herself onto the floor so they’re opposite each other.

She shakes her head in awe, not caring about the connotations if anyone else comes along. The door’s wide open, and scenes like this are commonplace amongst the staff – because tears are commonplace too. Nevertheless, she keeps her next words to a whisper. ‘You’ve really thought of everything today. Thank you for the song, too.’

Delia just hums. ‘I hoped it might help,’ she says with a sly grin, ‘especially as you didn’t want the day off.’

She narrows her eyes at the sarcasm in that sentence, realising she may have to resign herself to having this argument right up until they retire. She can’t quite resist a response, though, so offers, ‘Today of all days, I needed to be here and busy,’ even as her fiancée raises a brow. Relenting a little, she finishes, ‘I am sad, though.’

‘Of course you are,’ Delia replies, nodding, seeming hardly to draw breath.

She shakes her head again, bewildered by the lack of surprise. ‘I don’t know why, it’s not a significant anniversary.’

This is answered by a tut. ‘All I’ll say to that is, like _you_ say to the participants at the Foundation, _every_ anniversary…’

‘…is significant,’ she completes the sentence, amused by the reference to the child bereavement charity they started some time back. It’s been nearly a decade since Delia suggested the idea, but she frequently forgets it exists because they’re both still working and that means most activities are necessarily restricted to the occasional weekend. ‘I know,’ she agrees eventually, ‘and it’s true. But I can’t shake the guilt for moping.’

She sees Delia stiffen at the description, and braces _herself_ to get told off, but her fiancée just hums. Again. ‘I don’t think Grace would call it that, Pats.’

This change in tactic is unexpected enough to be intriguing, so she plays along. ‘Oh no?’

‘No,’ the Welshwoman repeats, and, clearly drawing out her accent very deliberately, continues, ‘she’d call it “a justified reaction to a difficult day”.’

She stifles a snort. ‘Advanced vocabulary for a nine-year-old.’

Delia giggles. ‘From what I know of _you_ as a child, I’d wager it’s accurate.’ Then Patsy feels the briefest brush of a hand against her own as she whispers, ‘She’d be proud of you,’ before returning to practical business. ‘Come on, let’s sort your face.’

Managing a nod and a grin, Patsy blinks, to stop herself tearing up at how lucky she is to have sustained such a safe and strong sanctuary with this wonderful woman for so long.

**Author's Note:**

> Historical note: As mentioned in _True Colours_ , the Broderip was a real place, and in my research I discovered that staff got shiatsu sessions to support them in their work. Although the focus here is the aftermath of one of Patsy's sessions, I think a lot of the emotions she experiences would probably have been prompted by the treatment. Not least because the vibe we get from canon is that she struggles with physical intimacy of all kinds.
> 
> Anyway, thank you for reading this ramble; I'd be interested to know if it seems in keeping with their canon characters and the way they might have aged.
> 
> I hope you're all staying as safe and well as possible.


End file.
